Abstract, Interpretations of Brazil and Global Capitalism

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Interpretations of Brazil and Global Capitalism

by Victor Coutinho Lage

Certain interpretations of Brazil may be read as texts providing theorizations of global capitalism. Study of a set of these texts focusing on Florestan Fernandes’s A revolução burguesa no Brasil exposes the connections between the internal and the external and the articulations of past, present, and future in the production of inequality within and among countries. Renewed attention to them is likely to be fruitful for debates on global capitalism that are not of exclusive interest to the Brazilian case and to challenge a certain global division of intellectual labor.

Abstract, Latin America’s Domestic Market and the Maintenance of Capitalism

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Latin America’s Domestic Market and the Maintenance of Capitalism
by Berenice Patricia Ramírez López


Rodolfo Stavenhagen, in his classic essay “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America,” addressed the narrow domestic market, indicating that it was basically a matter of income distribution. It has become clear that the priorities of the Latin American ruling class are focused on the world market rather than the local-national one. During the past 40 years, this class has become more determined to play the role of intermediary, taking its place in the field of trade, commerce, and mainly speculative financial transactions that allow for immediate returns. It does not promote domestic productive investment or the strengthening of education, innovation, or development technology and therefore secure and protected employment. Inequality has increased across the region, along with increasing labor precarity (notably informal employment), and thus the internal market reflects productive and social segmentation and inequality.

Abstract, The Uses of Informality: Urban Development and Social Distinction in Mexico City

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The Uses of Informality: Urban Development and Social Distinction in Mexico City
by Frank Müller and Ramiro Segura                                   


“Urban informality” is a signifier that is disputed by real estate developers, politicians, and residents in undertaking strategies of social distinction and gaining particular political and economic benefits. Research in the western periphery of Mexico City distinguishes three cases of such use of informality. First, real estate developers employ informality as a threat to valorize and justify an enclosed “First World” lifestyle in gated communities. Second, informality motivates homeowners’ associations to take on a neighborhood-defending and state-monitoring role. Third, besides its function in reconstituting class frontiers, it serves as a referent for broader social mobilization against the perceived informality of the local elite. By facilitating social distinction, informality continues to marginalize communities as it influences planning decisions and access to land in urban Latin America.

Book, Violence Against Latina Immigrants Citizenship, Inequality, and Community

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Violence Against Latina Immigrants
Citizenship, Inequality, and Community
by Roberta Villalon 

Caught between violent partners and the bureaucratic complications of the US Immigration system, many immigrant women are particularly vulnerable to abuse. For two years, Roberta Villalón volunteered at a nonprofit group that offers free legal services to mostly undocumented immigrants who had been victims of abuse. Her innovative study of Latina survivors of domestic violence explores the complexities at the intersection of immigration, citizenship, and violence, and shows how inequality is perpetuated even through the well-intentioned delivery of vital services. Through archival research, participant observation, and personal interviews, Violence Against Latina Immigrants provides insight into the many obstacles faced by battered immigrant women of color, bringing their stories and voices to the fore. Ultimately, Villalón proposes an active policy advocacy agenda and suggests possible changes to gender violence-based immigration laws, revealing the complexities of the lives of Latina immigrants as they confront issues of citizenship, gender violence, and social inequalities.

Political Report # 1163 Controversial Alternative for a Trapped Labor Force: Mexico’s Formal Employment and Illicit Drug Production

By Briseida Valencia Soto, Research Associate at COHA

Mexico's disenfranchised often see the illicit drug economy as an escape route from poverty. Mexican drug cartels post annual gains between approximately $18 and $39 billion USD.[1] For Mexico's poorest, the promise of quick and exorbitant profits is often too enticing to pass up. To put the allure of the drug trade into context, take for example the juxtaposition between Mexico's drug and crude oil economies: In 2014, crude petroleum, Mexico's primary export, was worth $37 billion, an estimated $3 billion less than the illicit drug economy's worth at its highest value.[2] The oil industry, which until recently was controlled by PEMEX, the national oil company, employed 151,000 workers in 2013.[3] In the early 1990s, the Sinaloa Federation, the largest and most powerful cartel conglomerate at the time, employed an estimated 100,000 individuals.[4] While PEMEX's 2014 workforce is somewhat larger, it is important to consider that the Sinaloa Federation was only one of dozens of Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in the 1990s. As such, it is logical to conclude that the illicit drug economy in the '90s offered employment to a massive workforce. Since the '90s, Mexico's drug industry has only grown in scale. To make matters worse, the narcotics industry, while far riskier than the formal economy, offers Mexico's poor viable work opportunities. Recently, the spike in heroin use in the United States (a 90 percent increase between 2002 and 2013)[5] has contributed to a boom in production and illicit employment opportunities. Moreover, because of the state's failure to suppress the drug economy, the drug business has taken on a veneer of folkloric invincibility that contributes to its attractiveness.

Political Report # 1136 Brazilian Politics, Players, Panama and Perpetual Motion By Nomi Prins

Political Report # 1136 Brazilian Politics, Players, Panama and Perpetual Motion By Nomi Prins, Nomi Prins' Website

There is no simplifying Brazil's political or economic situation. Anyone "certain" about the outcome is sure to get smacked in its crossfires sooner or later. Corruption might be bi-partisan in the United States, legalized in many cases, but in Brazil, it's the full multi-party monty. Eduardo Cunha, the Lower House speaker gunning for President (and political rival) Dilma Rousseff's impeachment,  has just been fingered by the Panama Papers for stashing millions in Switzerland. He was also under Carwash corruption investigations. No one so tainted, should risk throwing stones so blithely at a sitting, elected president. Brazil's new Attorney General, Jose Eduardo Cardozo, said as much, yesterday, on the grounds there are no legal reasons to impeach her, and that doing so would be to "rip up the constitution." The domestic and international implications associated with Brazil's internal turmoil transcend the walls of the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, a planned city that belies its far less organized and cohesive government.